INVASION USA

Illegals cost Texas $4.7 billion

Estimate based on analysis of Census data

Texas’ illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers more than $4.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration, according to an analysis of the latest Census data by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

According to the group, even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $3.7 billion per year, costing the average, native-born Texas household about $725.

The analysis looks at the costs to the state for education, health care and incarceration resulting from illegal immigration.

Texans spend more than $4 billion annually on education for illegal immigrant children and for their U.S.-born siblings. About 11.9 percent of the K-12 public school students in Texas are children of illegal aliens, according to the study.

Taxpayer-funded medical outlays for health care provided to the state’s illegal alien population amount to about $520 million a year, according to FAIR.

The uncompensated cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in Texas’ state and county prisons amounts to about $150 million a year (not including local jail detention costs or related law enforcement and judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to their incarceration). State and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but they do not come near to matching the expenses. The total of such payments are a little less than $1 billion per year.